


Delaying the Inevitable

by DemyxDancer



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Acceptance, And Really Who Doesn't?, Anxiety, Comfort, Gen, I Just Want Good Things for Zircon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:20:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23742931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemyxDancer/pseuds/DemyxDancer
Summary: Bubbling Zircon's Gem before escaping from the courtroom was the easy part. Convincing her that she isn't about to be shattered is significantly harder.
Relationships: Blue Zircon & Steven Universe
Comments: 28
Kudos: 79





	Delaying the Inevitable

Garnet turned the bubble around in her hands as she waited for Steven to return. The inert blue gemstone floated inside, oblivious to its surroundings. That was just as well, for now. 

The bubble had mysteriously appeared in the Burning Room at some point while Steven was in space. Garnet had nearly missed it, her focus entirely consumed with ways they could retrieve Steven. She had called Pearl and Amethyst to discuss it, wondering what it meant. Why had Steven bubbled a Gem and sent her home? Was this a Gem Steven had fought, that he decided to spare? If so, why send her here?

Pearl had a few theories as to the possible identity of the Gem based on her color and shape, but none had made sense until Steven returned home and told his story. Garnet caught Pearl’s subtle eyebrow raise when Steven mentioned his defense attorney accusing the Diamonds of the murder of one of their own and getting poofed for her troubles. 

If it were up to Garnet alone, she’d just as soon leave this Homeworld Gem in her bubble, at least for a while. Taking her out would lead to nothing but panic and stress. However, in this case, unbubbling was close to inevitable. In every future where Garnet pretended as though she hadn’t seen the bubble -- as well as in every future where Garnet tried to convince Steven to leave it alone -- Steven snuck into the Burning Room when the Gems weren’t around and freed her anyway. He was becoming much harder to predict as he got older, but this particular future seemed unavoidable. As much as Steven had changed in the past few years, he seemed as determined as ever to make friends with everyone he met.

So she waited in the living room with the bubble, hoping to help Steven get the best possible outcome with this one.

“Hey, Garnet.” Steven barely noticed her as he walked in the beach house, completely engrossed in his phone. He had been buried in his phone non-stop ever since returning from Homeworld, hoping that Connie would message him. He immediately began to head up the stairs.

“Steven, we need to talk.”

“Sure, what about?” He looked up, eyes going wide as he spotted the bubble. “That’s -- I can explain! Please don’t hurt her. She didn’t do anything wrong!”

Garnet felt stung that Steven immediately assumed the worst. She had to admit that she hadn’t had the greatest track record. She could still remember a younger Steven desperately throwing himself between her and the Centipeedle. 

“I’m not going to hurt her, Steven,” Garnet said, reassuringly, motioning for him to sit next to her on the couch. “I just need to know who she is.”

“You know how I told you guys they put me on trial for shattering Pink Diamond?” Steven sat down next to Garnet. He looked so tired. A few days’ rest was clearly not enough to recover from everything he had gone through. “She was my lawyer. She didn’t want to be, ‘cause she thought I was a war criminal and all, but she still tried really hard. Remember how I said she accused the Diamonds of murder? Yellow Diamond poofed her, and they were probably gonna punish her even worse than bubbling, and her gem was _right there._ I had to do something!” Steven looked at the gem in the bubble sadly. “All of this happened because I turned myself in. I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt.”

Garnet nodded. Steven was almost certainly telling the truth about this. His story matched up with what she assumed had happened when they realized the bubbled Gem was a Zircon. “I see. You should have told us.”

“I was afraid. I was worried you were gonna want to keep her in a bubble forever. I wanted to get to tell her that I’m sorry I got her in trouble and that she can never go back to Homeworld.” Steven looked up at her hopefully. “Can we unbubble her, please? She just seemed really nervous. I don’t think she’s gonna hurt anyone. Maybe she could go live with Lapis and Peridot!”

Lapis and Peridot. Steven’s early success at making friends with those two Gems had been both a blessing and a curse. It had gained the Crystal Gems (or at least Steven) two valuable allies, resolved the situation with Lapis stealing the ocean, and saved them from the Cluster. On the other hand, Steven seemed to see the two of them in every interaction he had with a Homeworld Gem. He had even tried to convince Jasper, of all Gems, to join his side. Even his experiences with Eyeball and Navy hadn’t dissuaded him. What’s more, the guilt he felt every time he failed to win a Gem over was not healthy.

He was so much like his mother sometimes.

“Steven, this is a Homeworld Gem. She won’t be accustomed to Earth. She might not want to join the Crystal Gems or be your friend like Lapis and Peridot. She’s going to be very scared. If we unbubble her, she’ll need you to help her adjust. It’s a big responsibility. I need to make sure you understand.”

“Yes,” said Steven, without a moment’s hesitation.

Garnet had looked into the likely futures, of course. There were many where the Zircon panicked and ran, even a few where she succeeded in escaping and ended up hurting herself. However, there were none where she tried to harm them. In almost all futures she could see, she gradually accepted her life on Earth once her initial terror subsided.

At some point, Steven would need to learn that not all Homeworld Gems could be brought to his side -- but he had been through so much, and he was so uncharacteristically sad and tired since arriving home, and this Gem was such a small risk. Today was not the day to teach him a lesson. Today was the day to let him have a well-deserved victory.

“All right, we can unbubble her.”

Steven’s face lit up with joy. “Oh, thank you, Garnet!”

* * *

Zircon squeezed her eyes shut and curled herself into a cringing ball the moment she realized she had regenerated. 

The last thing she remembered was accusing the Diamonds of murdering their own counterpart and covering it up. This was it -- her shattering. If she were “lucky,” she’d get a trial first, complete with the abject humiliation of one of her former colleagues giving her a half-hearted defense.

None of them were stupid enough to put their all into defending a known traitor and share her fate. Not like she had been.

“Hey,” said a friendly-sounding voice in front of her. “You okay?”

She recognized that voice. She opened her eyes, then shrieked and backed into the couch in terror. “Rose Quartz?!”

“It’s Steven, actually. I just have her gem.”

She was still in the bizarre form she had carried during the trial, and was accompanied by an extremely formidable looking cross-Gem fusion. An enforcer, no doubt.

“Oh, stars, did you bring me here to punish me for not being able to defend you? Are you going to shatter me?!”

“No, no one’s going to hurt you --”

“Are you going to scrub my gem with sand to torture me, or use tiny drills or chisels? I don’t have any information!”

“What? No! Why would you think that?”

“Isn’t that what the notorious Rose Quartz does to her enemies?”

“No! My mom would never do that! Right, Garnet?” Rose -- or Steven, she supposed -- looked to the fusion for support.

“No. That’s just Homeworld propaganda.”

“Of course that’s what you’d say,” said Zircon, trying to shrink back into the couch, hoping it would somehow swallow her whole.

“Zircon, it’s okay.” Steven took a step closer. “We’re really not going to do any of those things.”

“Then why did you kidnap me?”

“Because I thought the Diamonds were probably gonna shatter you, so I bubbled you and brought you here to be safe!” He spread his arms out wide in a welcoming gesture. “Welcome to Earth!”

“Earth?! Safe?!” Zircon’s eyes nearly popped out of her head. “Why didn’t you just leave me to be executed? At least that would have been some kind of justice.”

“What? That’s not justice at all!” Steven sat next to the quivering mess of Zircon on the couch. “I know you were assigned to defend me, so it’s kind of my fault that you got in trouble. I didn’t want something bad to happen to you because of me. No one’s going to hurt you here. I promise.”

Zircon couldn’t understand it. Why would rebel leader and war criminal Rose Quartz -- or Steven, as he was apparently calling himself now -- try to _help_ her? Still, she allowed herself to uncurl enough to take in her surroundings. She wasn’t sure what she expected the base of the rebellion to look like, but this certainly wasn’t it. The space was unusual, but open and casual. Orange sunlight poured in through the windows and door. There was a warp pad just a short distance away, if she could reach it -- but then, where would she even go? She began tensing up in panic again.

“It’s going to be okay. Just try to calm down,” said Steven.

“If you’re not going to torture or punish me, then what are you going to do with me?”

“Nothing! We’re not going to _do_ anything with you. You’re free now! You can do whatever you like! Well, as long as you don’t hurt anyone.”

“Whatever I like?” Zircon blinked in surprise. “You’re… letting me go?”

“Well, yeah!”

“I wouldn’t go very far, though,” cautioned the fusion. “You’re not familiar with Earth, yet. It could be dangerous.” She noticed Zircon’s eyes traveling to the warp. “You can use the warp, but you should know that it doesn’t lead off-planet.”

“Of course it doesn’t,” said Zircon. She didn’t know what she’d do even if it did. Hide out on some remote colony, maybe? She couldn’t picture herself lasting all that long.

“You might like it on Earth!” Steven was bouncing with enthusiasm. “There’s all sorts of fun stuff to do!”

“Fun… stuff…?” Even in the unlikely event that the rebels were being genuine about letting her go, she had no idea what she would do with her time without a job. She was used to case files and court proceedings filling the vast majority of her days, where even a small break to clear her mind was a luxury. 

“Yeah, you know, like the beach, TV, video games, music… Have you even seen a beach before?”

“I’ve only ever spent brief moments outside before.” The main office of the Zircons was connected directly to the courtroom, and all witnesses were summoned directly there, so there was never any need to venture further than those two buildings, apart from very rare public announcements and events. The only view of the world she had for the vast majority of her life was what she could see from her small office window.

Sometime, when she had a spare moment, she would look at some of the pictures from her court cases and imagine being somewhere else. Shame they were all crime scenes.

“You’ve never been outside?!” Steven’s eyes were wide with surprise. “Oh, I gotta show you then! C’mon!” 

He grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet before she could put up any resistance. She dug in her heels before they reached the door, dizzy and sick with anxiety. “Right now? Are you serious?”

“Yeah! You have to see the ocean!”

Zircon helplessly looked to the fusion for some kind of backup, primarily because she was the only other Gem there. The fusion simply adjusted her visor and shrugged. “Have fun.”

Before she could raise further protest, she was dragged out the door. She found herself looking at a vast, empty expanse of water, as far as the eye could see. The setting sun dyed the water in bright, glittering reds and oranges.

She had heard of oceans from reports from the colonies, but reading about the ocean did not at all prepare her for the actual sight of one. It was beautiful and terrifying in equal measure. She gripped the railing of the platform on which they were standing and stared.

“Ta-da! The beach!” said Steven, oblivious to her plight. He looked over. “Zircon, are you okay?”

She managed to produce an incoherent noise that hopefully conveyed the fact that she was not okay. A cool wind whipped across her face and ruffled her hair. Quivering, she tightened her grip on the railing.

Steven tugged on her sleeve. “C’mon, let’s go down to the beach.” As though in a daze, she relinquished her hold and allowed Steven to lead her down the steps and onto the sand. She only took a few steps onto the sand before tripping and falling over. “Be careful, sand can be tricky,” he said, helping her to her feet again. 

She looked down at the glittering grains of sand all over her hands and uniform. She brushed at them, but they stuck fast. 

Steven had left her side and run down the beach, closer to the ocean, where he sat on the sand and looked out. She looked around. No one was watching her or keeping her captive. If she ran, she might be able to get away.

To what end?

Instead of doing the sensible thing, she walked carefully across the sand to sit down next to Steven.

Everything was silent except for the gentle crashing of the waves and the occasional cry of the small organic creatures flying past. It was rhythmic and soothing. Against her will, she felt the edge of her panic beginning to drain away, replaced by utter exhaustion.

She shouldn’t let her guard down around Homeworld’s most wanted criminal. On the other hand, they had held her helplessly bubbled gem without harming it, and if they truly wanted to hurt her, the fusion back in the house was more than capable. There wasn’t any reason they would need to bother bringing her out here if they meant to do her harm.

“Isn’t it nice?” said Steven, eyes shining in the waning sunlight. “Sometimes I like to come out here and just think. I thought maybe you’d like that, too. I figured you could use some time to think.”

“It doesn’t seem real,” Zircon said, her voice having returned to her now that her anxiety had started to ebb. “I’m not convinced that this isn’t all a stress hallucination I’m having on my way to being shattered back on Homeworld. It wouldn’t be my first stress hallucination, you know.”

“I don’t feel like a hallucination,” said Steven, poking his stomach. “Seems pretty real to me.”

“Going off of the assumption that this is all real, then what happens now?”

“I dunno. We watch the sunset, I guess. Then maybe I can introduce you to some of the other Gems. You could stay on the couch tonight.” He smiled warmly. “We’ll figure something out. The important thing is that you’re safe now.”

Zircon’s eye twitched. She liked to think that thousands of years of experience had made her fairly good at being able to tell when a Gem was lying. This Steven was either one of the best liars she had ever met, or completely sincere. Given Rose Quartz’s notoriety, either seemed equally possible. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at Steven, trying to discern his motivations. “Steven, are you… are you trying to recruit me to your rebel group?”

“Yeah!” He smiled broadly. “I mean, you can be part of our group if you want to be. There’s no pressure. Lapis isn’t really part of our group and we still hang out all the time, so that’s fine too.”

She couldn’t believe she was actually considering it, but under the circumstances, she might very well be safer ingratiating herself with the rebels then not. It wasn’t as though she had a lot of options. “If I did, what would be expected of me? I don’t have any weapons or combat capabilities, you know.”

“Not really anything,” said Steven, casually. “You don’t need to fight.”

The gears turned in Zircon’s head as she tried to figure out the angle behind all of this. There was no way that Steven / Rose Quartz was actually just offering her a safe haven, no strings attached, out of the kindness of her gem. What use would a Zircon even be to someone who flouted Homeworld law? It simply didn’t make sense.

She decided to try a different line of questioning. “Steven, can I ask you how you escaped?”

“Oh, that’s a _really_ long story, but basically we fell down a shaft, met some off-color Gems, my friend Lars died, I turned him into a magical pink Lars, and then I got back here using the portal in his hair!” 

Zircon blinked.

“That probably sounds weird, doesn’t it?”

“That’s a bit of an understatement, don’t you think?!” Did he actually expect her to buy some story about magical hair portals? But then, he still seemed sincere, and if he wanted to lie he probably would have just claimed to have stolen a spaceship or something. “What are you planning on doing when the Diamonds send someone after you?”

“Oh, they don’t know I’m here!” he said cheerfully.

Zircon frowned and used her monocle to pull up the case file and re-check a crucial bit of information. “It says here that you were apprehended on Earth by an Aquamarine.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “It was right over there.” He pointed at a distant patch of ocean. “Oh. I get it. You think they’ll come back here.”

The anxious knot in Zircon’s gem had returned full-force. “Yes! Yes, I think they’re going to come back to exactly where they found you the first time! What are you thinking? Don’t you have some kind of rebel hideout?”

“I guess this _is_ the rebel hideout. It’s also just my home. I don’t really have anywhere else to go. I guess I could go sleep over in the barn, but that’s only like a mile away. Maybe we could take Dad’s van somewhere…?”

Zircon couldn’t believe it. _This_ was the rebel leader that had stymied Homeworld for hundreds of years? “If you don’t have a plan or even a hiding place, then you haven’t saved either of us. All you’ve done is delay the inevitable.” She curled up again, shaking. “Oh, I knew there had to be a catch! Not only am I going to be shattered, I’m going to be shattered on a strange alien planet light years from my office. I really _am_ the unluckiest Zircon in the galaxy!”

“Hey, no, don’t panic! Maybe they won’t bother. Or maybe we can fight them and win! We have some really good Gems here, just wait until you meet them.” He put a comforting hand on Zircon’s shoulder. “Or maybe when the Diamonds get here I can talk to them. I can explain to them that we’re just trying to live our lives and not hurt anyone. Maybe when they see how nice the Earth is, they’ll let us go!”

Suddenly, it clicked for Zircon: Steven’s apparent sincerity, his offer of safety, his requiring nothing in return. There was one very simple explanation. He was a _true believer._ He actually believed that he was doing what was best for Gemkind. What he was saying about convincing the Diamonds was absolutely, off-the-charts ludicrous, but the way he said it almost made her want to believe it. She was starting to understand why Gems willingly risked their lives to follow him, even though she liked to think she’d never be gullible enough to do the same.

Steven, getting no response from Zircon, unexpectedly pulled his knees into his chest and sighed sadly. “I don’t know. Maybe you’re right and we are just delaying the inevitable.”

Zircon looked down at her hands, still covered in glittering sand. By now the sun had nearly disappeared and the sky above them was starting to turn purple. She thought about the many times her clients had been sentenced to shattering, dragged off kicking and screaming, begging for just a little more time. Imminent doom or not, she had been handed the rare luxury of a second chance. 

“There can be value in delaying the inevitable,” said Zircon, carefully.

Steven looked up at her, hopeful.

“I may be the first Zircon in all of Gem history who has ever seen an ocean, you know. All things being equal, I think I’m glad that I did.”

“The ocean’s pretty great,” Steven agreed. “I’m glad you got to see it, too.”

They watched the waves flow in and out until the sun was gone, the moon shone overhead, and the stars came out. One of those points of light in the sky might be Homeworld. Zircon didn’t know which one, but she intended to try to work it out, if she had the time. After all, it was likely the only way she would ever see Homeworld again.

She was beginning to think that having a little time to herself at the end of everything was perhaps not the worst thing in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> This story fell out of my brain when writing about Zircs' Homeworld angst in _Professionals._ It's a different take for how she gets to Earth, but I imagine she ends up with an office in Little Homeworld and a Peridot driving her insane either way.


End file.
